Abstract

The number of patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases increases unproportionally high with the increase of the human population and aging, leading to very high expenses in the public health system. Therefore, the challenge of cardiovascular physics is to develop high-sophisticated methods which are able to, on the one hand, supplement and replace expensive medical devices and, on the other hand, improve the medicaldiagnostics with decreasing the patient’s risk. Cardiovascular physics–which interconnects medicine, physics, biology, engineering, and mathematics–is based on interdisciplinary collaboration of specialists from the above scientific fields and attempts to gain deeper insights into pathophysiology and treatment options. This paper summarizes advances in cardiovascular physics with emphasis on a workshop held in Bad Honnef, Germany, in May 2005. The meeting attracted an interdisciplinary audience and led to a number of papers covering the main research fields of cardiovascular physics, including data analysis,modeling, and medical application. The variety of problems addressed by this issue underlines the complexity of the cardiovascular system. It could be demonstrated in this Focus Issue, that data analyses and modeling methods from cardiovascular physics have the ability to lead to significant improvements in different medical fields. Consequently, this Focus Issue of Chaos is a status report that may invite all interested readers to join the community and find competent discussion and cooperation partners.

Received 26 February 2007Accepted 01 March 2007Published online 30 March 2007

Acknowledgments:

We thank the Wilhelm und Else Heraeus Foundation for their sponsorship of the Workshop “Cardiovascular Physics-Model Based Data Analysis of Heart Rhythm; 346. WE-Heraeus-Seminar” held in May 2005, in Bad Honnef, Germany, where this Focus Issue had its origin. J. K. and N. W. acknowledge financial support by the EU Network of Excellence, Grant No. NoE 005137 BioSim, as well as by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Grants Nos. KU 837/23-1 and KU 837/20-1. R.B. acknowledges financial support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Grant No. BA 1581/4-1.